Another Tom Wolfe special! (See: Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Fund Liquidity Facility)
Stocks and bonds offer different ways to invest in a company. They operate differently and have different pros and cons. Meanwhile, there are securities - called convertible bonds - that offer aspects of both types of investment. An asset swapped convertible option transaction re-separates these functions - splitting the bond and stock parts of a convertible bond.
A bond represents a loan. When you buy a bond, you are basically loaning money to a company, the grown-up version of spotting a buddy a few bucks for dinner. Eventually, hopefully, your buddy (or the company) will pay you back.
A stock, on the other hand, represents the purchase of ownership, or at least a part ownership. You aren't owed any money, as you would be with a bond, but you hope to make money as the company grows. As the company's value increases, the stock's value increases as well.
A convertible bond combines these investments. It is a bond, paying a yield and coming with a promise of repayment. However, the security also comes with an option to convert it into stock (hence the "convertible" part). So if you want, you can, under conditions laid out in the convertible bond, change the bond into a certain amount of stock at a certain price.
Here's the trade off, though: to convert into stock, you have to give up the bond. No more yield. No more guaranteed payments.
The ASCOT presents a "have your cake and eat it too" opportunity. The mechanics of the transaction are relatively complicated. But the result is splitting the bond part of the convertible bond from the stock part. You can hold the bond, with all the yield and guaranteed return, while still getting the upside available from owning stock.
Related or Semi-related Video
Finance: What is Busted Convertible?14 Views
Finance a la shmoop..what is a busted convertible?
well techno growth forever biotechs swore to its customers that upon death they [Mans head enters into a glass jar]
could sever their heads freeze them and in 40 years they would have technology
to have them reborn into a really cool robot body and yeah kim kardashian model
was a huge huge hit we cannot lie.... The company stocks zoomed to a hundred
dollars a share and management needed cash to open offices in China Latin [Cash travels around the world]
America and Africa but they didn't want to suffer dilution by just selling
equity or part ownership in themselves to the street at least not at the
hundred dollar share price they really just wanted to borrow money [Cash and an IOU note appears on a table]
to fund these new offices because well they thought their stock would easily
get to $250 a share in the next few years
tons of people out there who wanted to you know live forever
you know like fame.....nevermind their bankers were nervous about how
investors would react to just a straight bond which carried 8% interest so
instead they kind of compromised by doing a convertible preferred stock [Men give handshake]
offering they sold preferred stock to the street that carried just 3% interest
but those preferred shares were convertible into common stock at a
hundred seventy five bucks a share so the owners of the preferred would keep [Stock value of biotech company rises]
clipping their three percent coupons until one day the stock hit a hundred
seventy five bucks or better well and then they could participate in the
[Man hits a baseball] upside if the stock really was a homerun but sadly as many things do in shmoop
video....Test came back from the early decapitating trials and well they were
oh so not good legions of zombies began to roam the streets and while consumers [Zombies walking along the streets]
just didn't want to go there they'd rather truly rest in peace so the stock
cratered down to $20 a share where it would sit for all eternity in what is
called a busted convertible and took us a while to get there but we got
there the convertible preferred would pay 3% a year in interest as it always [Preferred stock with 3% interest sticker]
had and a convertible stock is so far below the conversion price of $175 well,
investors assume it will never convert the investment case views
the convert solely as a preferred or kind of like a bond offering against
competitive bond interest rates so yeah that's a busted convertible although so
is this they really never should have given robot Kim K a driver's license [Robot Kim Kardashian beside an upside down, crashed car]
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